Blue and Red: Observations on the Linear Gesture of Andreas Sinopoulos

Since the 1980s, Andreas Sinopoulos has been developing a personal visual idiom based on the systematic use of gestural drawing, mainly with ink on paper, although depending on the series, other materials such as pastels, colored pencils, tempera, and charcoal also appear in his work. I find particularly interesting his series “Blue and Red,” which the painter developed after 2007. The works from this period form a self-contained unit, where the act of painting is stripped of recognizable figuration and evolves into an intense, almost ritual process of inventing and constructing morphological fields. It is a painting of rhythm, repetition, and persistence, where the line is not outlines or symbols, but energy, pulse, and echo of internal movements.

His compositions are characterized by continuous, layered repetitions of writing, sometimes condensing into solid fields of color, other times thinning out to reveal the whiteness of the paper. The hue of the ink, mainly red or blue, plays a structural role in the overall composition and acts as a carrier of emotional and psychological intensity. The process seems based on the repetitive tracing of the same gesture, creating forms through accumulation and displacement. The work emerges not from the conception of an external motif, but from the excavation of an internal flow.

Sinopoulos’ practice can be placed within the broader field of non-representational or abstract art, without adhering to a specific style or school. His morphological approach connects him to movements such as gestural abstraction, while his insistence on linear gesture, on the structural significance of repetition, and on the experiential intensity of chromatic action links his work to artists like Hans Hartung, Henri Michaux, or even Mark Tobey—though not as influence, but rather as an intrinsic affinity towards a direction where writing becomes a vehicle of psychic energy. His insistence on writing as both form and content, and the absence of conventional iconography, does not suggest abstraction as a stylistic mode, but rather an introspective process of recording, akin to the art informel and tachisme of post-war France. However, unlike gesture as pure freedom found in American abstract expressionism, Sinopoulos’ work is more disciplined, compositionally balanced, and simultaneously obsessive in its line—forming a kind of writing-painting with conceptual characteristics.

His relationship with paper is essential: it is not a mere substrate, but an active field of dialogue. The work evolves with a sense of temporality, as the viewer can read the time of the gesture and the rhythm of its creation. The gradual densification of lines and their transition from surface to depth shape a space-time fabric that evokes inner landscapes, psychic geographies, and invisible, personal worlds. Sinopoulos’ painting does not aim for representation but achieves the activation of the gaze and the silent participation of the viewer in the creative process. It is a corporeal and at the same time spiritual art, formed between the materiality of ink and the transparency of emptiness. Through a coherent and dedicated course, he has shaped a distinctive place where writing meets silence and the image is born from the absence of the predetermined.

These works, situated within a framework of self-awareness and mystical abstraction, make Sinopoulos a particularly significant link between postmodern European concerns and the introspective, poetic expression of the Greek artistic experience. Sinopoulos represents a generation that did not abandon the search for the essence of form, nor did it succumb to the rhetoric of spectacle. On the contrary, through his persistent ink-on-paper work, he establishes a solitary yet consistent visual path that contributes to the broader conversation about the role of gesture, writing, and the psychic landscape in contemporary art.

Paris Kapralos
Art Curator
Athens 2025